How often should marketing departments perform a 'data cleanse'?

Lauren,

What sort of data cleanse are you referring too? Email? Postal? And what do you mean by cleanse? Complete purge? Idle? Rest?

Andrew Kordek
Co-Founder, Trendline Interactive
A Email Marketing Agency
Twitter: @andrewkordek & @trendlinei
Email: andrew@trendlineinteractive.com

I agree with Peter on buying lists that decay. But, a data cleanse is not a list purchase and therefore the answer is not "never".

He also talks about activity tracking and use which I also agree with. Many of the marketing automation solutions do a great job of this but I think this is different cleaning and refreshing and purging a legacy database. As we all know most of us have legacy databases which have already decayed, and many of those people are not regular site visitors. Also, someone may come in as a new reg and have site visits and this is great. But if they don't buy right away and they continue to be nurtured over time with no responses, then cleansing is important so if they are bad they can be purged / updated.

It's not stated whether it's B2C or B2B. If it's B2C it really depends on the nature of the base: prospect or customer. If it's a prospect base normally on a per campaign basis. If it's a customer base then hopefully the base would be segmented so that valued repeat customers with high spend are separated from enquirers, ad-hoc buyers and regular monthly spenders. I would recommend cleaning each segment in accordance with the overall, annual marketing plan/activity for that particular segment. I would expect different segments to be cleaned differently using appropriate mixes of specific suppression files to deliver the best cost saving/ROI on planned activity. You would expect the repeat, valued customer segment to be reasonably clean from purchase history and tracking, however, people move and die as well as the possibility for duplicates to accumulate (esp if touchpoints include call centre, web, hard copy).

If it's B2B then, as already discussed, the methodology is different in that the tools available to B2B aren't as comprehensive as with B2C (certainly in the UK).

An effective data clean can deliver real savings on ongoing marketing activity as well as a host of other benefits I am sure we are all already aware of ;-)

rgds
Adam

We are in the midst of the cloud revolution. Those of us brought up in a different era are worried about our songs not being a physical presence on our machine, but being in the cloud. five years ago it was that CDs were physical and we didn't like them just being inside a machine. Mindsets move on.

We have the same with data. In the old world it was something paper - held in our rolodex. That seems ludicrous now. Then it was in our CRM. Big lists of everyone we'd ever met, mostly incomplete, often duplicated and totally out of date. A dumb tool too - you only got out what you put in.

Wouldn't it have been more useful if your CRM said - you have three top companies in the oil and gas industry - here's the rest of the top ten. If it said - you need CEO, CFO and COO to sell your product but 30% of your data only has two of those and 50% only has one - so here's the rest.

And wouldn't it be useful if it was just something your systems looked up as they needed to - accessing always on, up to date information. Much richer data too - not just name rank and phone number but their whole digital footprint. And with real connections - which company is owned by whom, what goes on in this location of this company and who works with who across the globe.

That is 21st century data. Not here fully yet, but the first stage is here - you can simply enter a company (or identify them automatically from a web visit) and the system will access up to date cloud data with contact details and a link to LinkedIn profiles. Time to move on from data stuck in a CRM to decay.

The answer is never. The era of buying lists which decay has long gone.

Modern data is always on - it should be dynamically refreshed to be always up to date.

A modern marketing solution should automatically know who is on your website and track it back to the company the person works for and their location. It should then look up the key people for your sort of decision at that location and allow you to engage and nurture these in a multi-threaded, intelligent nurturing programme. It should build intelligence on both person and company - what they are up to, how they are doing, where the person worked previously and how long ago - powerful, rich data which helps you understand their purchase decision, shows you who the other decision makers and influencers are and what factors they are likely to use in their decision.

This should be overlaid with a visit and engagement history - where did they find you, was a single visit or one of several from the company, which pages on your website did they visit, which key phrases attracted them and what did they download.

This intelligence helps you provide a much closer match between their problem or opportunity and your solution.

Data has changed forever but no-one has told the CRM and similar manufacturers - it is another example of old-fashioned thinking stopping us from realising the full benefits of modern technology.

(By the way, this is not pie in the sky - it is being done - now.)